Transcript: House GOP’s response to President Barack Obama’s FY2014 budget

Excerpts from press briefing remarks by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) on the FY2014 budget proposed by President Barack Obama on April 10, 2013:

House Speaker John Boehner:

Morning, everyone. House Republicans passed a balanced budget that will foster a healthy economy and to help create jobs. Unfortunately, the President’s budget never comes to balance. Every family has to balance its budget; Washington should as well.

The American people know you can’t continue to spend money that you don’t have. The federal government has spent more than what it has brought in in 55 of the last 60 years.

Now think about this. You can’t continue to go on like this. And that’s why we came forward with a plan that will balance the budget over the next 10 years.

We believe strongly that it’s time for Washington to deal with its spending problem.

And while the President has backtracked on some of his entitlement reforms that were in conversations that we had a year and a half ago, he does deserve some credit for some incremental entitlement reforms that he has outlined in his budget.

But I would hope that he would not hold hostage these modest reforms for his demand for bigger tax hikes.

Listen, why don’t we do what we can agree to do. Why don’t we find the common ground that we do have and move on that.

President’s got his tax hikes in January and we don’t need to be raising taxes on the American people. So I’m hopeful in the coming weeks we’ll have an opportunity through the budget process to come to some agreement.

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I think we’ve made it clear that the sequester’s going to stay in place until we have cuts and reforms that put us on the path to balance the budget over the next 10 years. And as we look at the debt limit, those are the kind of changes that we believe will be important that will allow us to reduce the debt.

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House Majority Leader Eric Cantor:

Good morning. Finally the President has offered his budget to the American people.

And what we see inside the document is more of the same. More spending. Higher taxes. More debt.

Now, the Speaker talked about the fact that there are some things in the budget beyond the tax increases that, frankly, we can find some agreement on.

And I share the sentiment that we ought to see if we can set aside the divisiveness and come together to produce some results for the people that sent us here.

If the President believes, as we do, that the programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security – they’re on the path to bankruptcy and that we actually can do some things to put them back in the right course and save them to protect the beneficiaries of these programs, we ought to do so and we ought to do so without holding them hostage for more tax hikes as the Speaker’s indicated.

Listen, the disagreements we have in this town are well-published and well-known. But let’s start anew and try and say, “Look, set aside these differences and let’s come together on the things we can agree on.” I think most people do that in their daily lives and expect nothing less of us here in Washington.